Hearts Of Fire Project

Comment

Comment by mary rose on July 19, 2009 at 4:04pm

I know i keep putting statistics up here, but IMHO this is the only way we are going to get a clear view of what is going on and be able to make the necessary adjustments to the system as a whole so that it can function in a healthy manner once again.

For close to 17 years now i have facilitated what I call "The Co-Learner's List" on the Internet. It is a private list which averages about 90 subscriptions composed of people from all walks of life. We gather information from the Internet with regard to the challenges the human family faces today from books,articles and other sources, and then discuss what we bring to the circle, using dialogue as a medium.

In this manner, we have become very well informed, and had had many transformations and epiphanies within the group due to awareness of, and incorporation into our collective psyche of new information.

The Deflating Economy
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney07132009.html
By MIKE WHITNEY
July 13, 2009

Excerpt from this article:
"For every job opening in the USA, there are more than five unemployed actively seeking work vying for those jobs."

When I did my homeless stint in the recession of late '80s - early 90's, I recall seeing statistics then indicating that as many as 300 - 350 applicants were applying for one position in the corporate structure.

What we are seeing here is just the beginning of how bad it is going to get before it can get better.

When we look at our situation closely, it becomes obvious that we cannot live on a finite planet and continue to do the things we do. The situation demands that we dramatically alter our present lifestyle.

But the question of the day is: "how do we do this in short amount of time we have left before total ecosystem collapse?" Is it possible for us to set up circumstances which will catapult us into "spontaneous remission"? And i do believe the answer is "yes" but it calls for us to have the courage to completely redesign our social systems so that they are "life-enhancing" and work for us not against us as they are doing today. .

In order to solve the challenge we face with unemployment and consequent homelessness, we are going to have to look at some very "out of the box" type solutions, especially when we consider we are faced with not only unemployment and homelessness, but with collapsing ecosystems and global climate change as well. .

We must approach this with open minds.

After you have taken the time to read the article above and get some idea as to what is going on today, and i do believe that Mike Whitney calls the shots from a fairly unbiased position, then let's go to the Ecological Footprint website and each of us take a test to see how we are doing individually as far as remaining within the bounds of sustainability goes.

www.ecologicalfootprint.com/

And when you have finished doing this if everyone would post their "footprint" to the list so we can all view it it would be most helpful. This will demonstrate to each of us what actions we must take in order to bring our overall ecological footprint back in the boundaries of what the Earth can handle in terms of resources used.

Recall that at the present time, if we continue to use resources in the manner we do today, but the year 2030 we will need the equivalent of 2 earths in order to meet demand. And, that simply is not feasible.

As we go through some exercises here, we will soon begin to see why some of us are homeless and millions of others are headed in that direction, and what we can do about it.

Comment by mary rose on July 17, 2009 at 7:14pm

I really like the idea of abolishing the word homelessness too, but like Jeanne, wonder how we identify "those who are challenged in how they live" as expressed by Mitch. Labels are distasteful to me because every time we create one we also create a box for someone or something.

Looking back to when i was so-called "homeless" i had the same feelings that Mitch is expressing when he writes: "if the planet is my home, and our home, how can there be homelessness"? I was quite happy living in my station wagon and sleeping out in the open, sometimes being invited in by some who were willing to provide a room for me for a week or so at a time. By the time i got to this point, i was really fed up with the house owning me and having to do all kinds of things i did not like doing in order to have this six-bedroom four- bath home that i barely had time to do more than sleep in since i had to work so hard to keep the $10 to 15 thousand a month that i needed to meet overhead coming in. There was no real joy left in life anymore -- i didn't have time to enjoy friends and family, couldn't afford to go on a vacation because a problem with an escrow might come up while i was away that no one but me could handle, and if the escrow fell apart then i was up a crick without a paddle as far as meeting overhead went. I lived like this for almost 17 years and believe me life was no longer fun. The demands to be onstage at all time and ready to perform my act was very draining. So, i went from a situation that had become draining to one that was enjoyable as i was able to spend my days at the beach in my station wagon, reading, reading, reading and learning as much as possible about how the economics of our country worked among other things that aren't politically correct to talk about. .

What became apparent to me was that i was finally free from the Great American Nightmare of keeping up with the Joneses in order to be accepted in certain circles and being able to fit myself into the definition of success that others had created. And all for what -- increased risk of heart attack and cancer, alienation from friends and family, getting caught up in the addiction known as "consumerism".

How many people on this list are aware that from the end of World War II until the present, the U.S. became the most prosperous country in the history of the world but at the same time it created more environmental damage than at any time in all of past recorded history. Statistics from: "The Great Boom" written by historian (now deceased) Robert Sobel and U.N. Environmental Reports.

Those we will refer to as "homeless," until we find a better way of identifying us, are not those doing the unprecedented damage to the environment. It is those of us who are employed mainly by the large corporations and who demand to live in large homes with all of the latest appliances and other comforts while we drive miles to work in huge buildings that demand the destruction of huge amounts of rain and old growth forests in order to build and maintain them.

Another little known statistic is recorded by Alvin Toffler in "The Third Wave" -- when the total costs of building all of the buildings, highways and add-ons required to provide places for people to work and shop along with maintaining them, it would be far less costly to pay people to stay home. And, as jobs disappear, that may be exactly what will happen. But what this does is to disenfranchise the capitalists from their ability to provide investment monies and charge interest on the loans. And the capitalist bankers don't like this, they want to be able to continue to rake in the dollars no matter what the cost to the rest of us.

So, they continue to "manufacture consent" by the public at large to the rape and pillage that goes on using the media as a means to do so.

A new book out that should be required reading is: "MIND Programming" by Eldon Taylor. While Part I reveals how mind programming takes place, Part II is about "Harnessing the Power of the Mind" so that we are inserting the scripts or programs into our sub-conscious mind ourselves and are not vulnerable to programming by others.

As Ghandi said: "We must be the change we wish to see in our lives."

May we move into another level of consciousness and create the shift into another way of living -- one that is sustainable and preserves this earth for our children and grand-children to honor and enjoy, for right now it is their inheritance we are spending with wild abandon and no concern for their future.

.

Comment by Jeanne on July 17, 2009 at 4:10pm

Mitch,
I truly love the concept of abolishing the word - homelessness... but then what would we use to express the dilemma that so many face?
It rankles my ire that birds and beavers have homes and my brothers and sisters with thumbs don't...

Comment by mitch gold on July 17, 2009 at 3:11pm

consider: abolish the word homelessness.

if the planet is my home, and our home, how can there be homelessness?

certainly there are those that are challenged in how they live - let's help remove the challenges - but let us not institutionalize homelessness as the University of Toronto has done with a "Chair" in Homelessness.

I believe the World Peace Posse can contribute towards the elimination of this work from our vocabulary.

peace

Mitch Gold
World Peace Posse

Comment by Roshanna Sidney Evans on July 17, 2009 at 1:55pm

Ciao Mary Rose,
Thanks for your comment. I am evolving in my appreciation of the coherency of universal law and human genius, all living genius for that matter and I am truly amazed, humbled, honored and excited by what I inquiry, test, and receive. I don't have 'the answers' but I feel deeply consonant with my unfolding journey and openness to new vocabularies and social templates. What intrigues me most is the amazing breadth and depth and velocity with which I glean knowledge when I get out of the way of 'interpretation' and allow it to reveal itself to me rather than me imposing my 'version' of reality. Too many facets to choose only one, and there is so much contingent data that we blind ourselves unless we apprentice Flow.
I think when we speak of human dysfunction we speak of a term coined by a competitive and contradictory social landscape where body, mind, spirit, soul, etc are isolated and analyzed as separate and distinct entities rather than conceptualized and integrated as many layers of One Whole.
You do not heal disease with disease. I have been able to access new information when I declare that I have a stomach ache but then I must allow my stomach ache to inform me how I've alienated it. When a client stops 'chattering away' in therapy and begins sharing those perplexing awarenesses of self that, once shared, initiate an autonomic rebalancing. When we share, we open, when we open we find the gross physical evidence is a minimal part of the amazing energetic intelligence that influences the energetic web our lives. Even if we don't listen, those forces work all the same so that when we do listen we catapult ourselves into natural alignment, insight and evolvement.
We live at a time of intense 'factual' data to justify legalized inquiries iinto global ecology and the future of man, 2012 and the end of the world, etc. No matter how provocative and stimulating they are it is my humble opinion that they do not accurately represent the physiological template of man or the lightening speed with which he can transform contemporary actuality.

So, it is not that we don't have the resources to resolve our issues, it is that we are thwarted by those who do not want true success, they want business, power and whatever else. If we react against them we lose the power of our authentic vision and capacity to to perform at peak capacity. This is because peak performance is not reactive It is a state of grace, the force of alignment, integrated collaboration without prior congruence. The experience of our own core intelligence challenges the old industrial complex terms and ecological mirages with a free infrastructure that reflects more than we consciously know about inherent global living organics.
Every continent has their pioneers, those who have stepped into a new dimensionw with cutting edge definitions and reset terms and conditions.
If man is creating a workforce that annihilates himslef I suggest that he allow the robotic workforce to take care of the quality of life represented by our mundane 5-7% of human potential, currently championed as grand, and allow that 97% recognized but unresourced to surface from within.
To do this requires that we have to change the game, release the dense, low frequency of competitive psyche focues on limited and repetitive productivity in greater and greater numbers.Stop the merry-go-round of habitual existential routine and pay attention...ask new questions in new and different ways.
Mary Rose, if in the last 30+ years in which I've been an adult we have not handled the great issues of our time, then the point of departure, the analysis of error and answers to resolve them once and for all are wrong. They don't harness the full picture. They are based on falsely proven systems of belief and evalutation.

We know better intrinsically or we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. We know. If that knowing is part of the7% of our current human competency great, but if its in the 93% we don't use let's step out and claim it!


I deeply appreicate your wide range of knowledge and experience.

Comment by mary rose on July 17, 2009 at 11:09am

I found a comment on Frizzy's World a few minutes ago re: technology that i feel is appropriate for comment here, and i have copied my comment and am posting it below for your convenience.

Quote:

I do not believe it is simply about technology, but learning to discern what is "appropriate" technology and what is not.

And it is a matter of "integration". In his book: "Transforming Human Culture: Social Evolution and the Planetary Crisis," Dr. Jay Earley puts forth the theory that at the beginning of our social evolution certain "grounding" qualities were inherent with the system, e.g., natural living, community, equality, vitality, and belonging. These are also defined as "feminine qualities', Then as the human family began to develop ways of defending ourselves against the forces of the natural world, we began to develop what are referred to as "emergent (masculine) qualities," e.g., technology, social systems design (including the very powerful "driver" -- the monetary system,) and rational thinking. In developing the latter qualities, the grounding qualities became suppressed. This has been very costly as it came at the expense of our health and wellness as those grounding qualities -- qualities that provide us with "soul," that is, put meaning in our life, were lost.

The next step in social evolution Earley argues is for us to take conscious charge of our future by integrating the emergent qualities with the grounding qualities so that we may move forward into the future in health and wellness.

This information is supported by David Wolfe's recent release of information related to the need for us to be "physically-grounded" to the earth as well as "emotionally" so that the healthy neurotransmitters, e.g., endorphins and oxytocinc are released at the right time and in the right amounts. See video here: www.longevitynowprogram.com/.../barefoot-technology-exposed/

End of quote.

Comment by mary rose on July 17, 2009 at 11:02am

Melanie, Welcome to the HOF discussion group here on AOAND. Am delighted to have so many people joining us and getting so much input here. What a marvelous idea for the "Big Issue" as a means of creating dialogue between homeless and non-homeless individuals so the realization can emerge that there really is no difference. Except, if i may be permitted to say so from my own experience, that the homeless may be more in touch with reality than those who are stuck in the modern world of make believe artificial systems and live in modern homes, work modern jobs and participate in activities that really are destroying the fragile ecosystems which make up our life support system.

This is the real tragedy today -- feeling that what we do as we destroy the Earth around us is "normal". .

I do not know of any similar "set ups" here in the U.S. but then we have not as yet investigated what is fully available.

Just as an "add-on" here,
The consensus of many psychologists today is that as a collective conscious/unconscious, we (society) suffer from the pathology of dissociation (from our natural systems) and suffer from the add-on of "addiction". Both Freud and Jung felt that society suffered from a neurosis, but neither of them were able to put an exact finger on it at that time.

Comment by mary rose on July 17, 2009 at 10:08am

Dear Rosh, your input here is much appreciated. I was thinking just last night as to how "unconditional love" has the ability to heal all dis-ease. And then recalling that love is a molecule of emotion (neurotransmitter) named "oxytocin" that is released by both the brain and the heart when we make certain gestures, e.g., hugs, handshakes, kisses, enacting a sexual embrace, etc. And, is thus something that we have control over -- we can engender these feelings or we can withhold them, and the choice is ours to make.

I am also aware that "love" is an energy field which is denoted by subtle frequency vibrations that can be measured and thus evaluated. The normal frequency vibration for a human is around 60 hz, but varies from person to person. Dr. Valerie V. Hunt was the first to discover that each of us has our own signatory subtle energy pattern. She was also the first to recognize that that energy pattern may be influenced by the thoughts we think and the actions we take -- and, may go from coherence to chaos according to how we individually choose to perceive our environment. And, as we are learning from the research of Dr. Bruce Lipton, how we perceive our environment is the determining factor in who we are and how we act.

The point i am trying to get to here is that the Universe is very precisely mathematically constructed as are each of us So, i do not feel that statistics should be interpreted as "horrifying," but as useful indicators as to how far out of coherence any energy field (system) is so that it may be brought back into its boundaries of safety which signify health within the field of any organism or system.

In recent years as a part of our departure from the earth as our source of energy and the creation of artificial systems, e.g., stock markets, we have moved away from what David Bohm labeled the "Implicate Order of the Universe." He also noted that it has an Explicate Order as well. But in moving away from the precise mathematical order in which the Universe is constructed, we, as :modernists" have created incoherent (or dis-eased) patterns within our systems that can only be described as "death-defining" rather than as "life-enhancing". It is to this field that we must direct our concern.

Now this is the "short-version" because it would take several books to set this out very clearly and precisely (and these books have been written) but what i want to get to is that "statistical analysis" is a very accurate and precise way of defining how far out of balance a system is and what needs to be done in order to bring it back into balance. The Ancient Ones understood this and used Sacred Geometry (which is found throughout nature) as a means of demonstrating this. But in our quest for "modernity" we have wandered from this path and are no longer able to understand the natural boundaries inherent within our systems and remain within them.

However, researchers such as Gregg Braden (Fractal Time) and Dr. Bruce Lipton (Spontaneous Evolution) http://www.brucelipton.com/store/Humanity-is-On-the-Brink-of-Spontaneous-Evolution/, are now bringing this information back into our memory so that we may use it at this time to guide us on our path much as the Mayans did.

The Mayans very clearly understood the cycles and patterns of the astrological Universe and used them to predict events here on earth with astounding precision. The the priests of old, wanting to hold onto the control they held over people, suppressed this information and replaced it with ideological religious beliefs which left out human biology and replaced it with "faith-based" mythological tales which obfuscated the truth. Now we have come full cycle and can once again begin to know who we are through scientific means which are based in the field of mathematics.

Statistics give us a very valid means of understanding and interpreting data, please let us not throw it out with the bathwater.

with love and appreciation

Comment by Melanie Worman on July 17, 2009 at 9:53am

I'm delighted to have just found this group and would like to give a British perspective on homelessness.
Prior to 1979 in central London one didn't see homeless people sleeping in shop doorways. Then Margaret Thatcher came to power and as a direct result of her legislation (i.e. denying welfare benefits to 16 & 17 year olds) she and her government created mass homelessness.
When I moved to Bristol in the 1990s I decided to help the homeless by working with THE BIG ISSUE. The Big Issue was originally set up in London by John Bird under the banner 'Helping the Homeless to Help Themselves'. For those not conversant - The Big Issue is a weekly magazine which is sold by the homeless. A Big Issue vendor purchases the magazines for say $2 each and sells it on the street for $4. Each vendor is assigned a 'pitch' (previously agreed with local shops etc) and often builds up a large clientele who not only buy the magazine but who also engage in conversation. This helps the vendor to feel less isolated.
The Big Issue office, where the vendors buy the magazine, has many support services such as further education, access to social housing, drug & alcohol advice and even reiki healing. All profits are ploughed back into homeless initiatives.
After my first day working as a volunteer on the front line, the magazine distribution office, and drinking endless cups of coffee whilst chatting to the vendors, I discovered 'they' (the homeless) were just like the rest of us and didn't have two heads! One thing I noticed most of them had in common was 'difficult' childhoods, so I felt quite at home.
I went on to write for the magazine as well and was paid minimum journalistic rates which helped me a lot at the time as I was a single parent below the poverty line.
Anyway, are there any similar set-ups in the USA?

Comment by Roshanna Sidney Evans on July 16, 2009 at 10:07pm

I suggest exploring disenfranchisement and homelessness within the individual, housed or homeless on the outside.
I suggest worrying less about frightening statistics and more about exploring the unspeakables and untouchables in our own life so that we have a deep, living and mobile understanding of the challenges we face. It is the smaller microcosm that is the cell of the macrocosm.
I suggest banking on humanity, gardening humane-ness, cultivating the deeply powerful and lifesaving tools of a smile, a simple touch, listening, donating blood or/and plasma, volunteering time AND heart to nurturing the young minds of tomorrow with heartfelt play and imagination.
I suggest the daily 'discipline' of looking our fellow humans in the eye with a generous and welcoming smile, giving our seat to another out of respect not pity, slowing our pace to feel our own feet on the sidewalk, to be aware if they are supple and easy, if they are truly moving us forward or simply 'following instructions'.
I suggest that we take the position of being in the right time and having the wherewithall and creative knowledge to act consciously and coherently as a microcommunity, that we are able to reconnect to the sole (soul) of the Earth with the soles (soul) of our feet and the brilliance of an awakened heartmind to speak, act and move with steadfastness and in aligment with the natural flow of a balanced ecosystem involving all living organisms, visibile and invisible.
Disease is the state of dis-ease and it is neverhealed or balanced by focusing on the dysfunction or disenfranchised elements. It is healed by reclaiming the original living patterns of ease, by re-engaging the liquid, fluid core of aliveness that releases adhesions and blockages, mental, physical, psychic, and whatever else there is.
Life can only be lived, that is all Life knows so everything we add that impedes that generous and generative activity requries revision, resetting, and a major re-embracing of innate genius so that we can change the terms and conditions with which we describe and submit to ourrent world.
I suggest we open our arms and reclaim that Life that tingles within us every second of every moment of every day, that we cease to be afraid of fear and softness, momentary doubts, that we cease to be angry at the world and cultivate our own majestic garden of potential so that we, too, have not lived in vain but have demonstrated the brilliance of being alive and being human!

The single human being is an astonishing landscape of infrasystems and intranets, of interdependencies and solidariety that, in itself, demonstrates the innate genius and empowered nature of a well tempered and brilliantly designed and ecological collective consciousness.

I have no doubt that when we reset to this innate genius our work together will be unstoppable and the changes will be swift, life-saving and life empowering.

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